


alone together

by cloudcompany



Category: CrankGameplays - Fandom, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Blind Character, Short Story, Suspense, blind!ethan, living alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcompany/pseuds/cloudcompany
Summary: Ethan has just moved to Los Angeles from a relatively tiny town in Maine; he's sure a bigger, more exciting city like the City of Angels is bound to bring some interesting and terrifying changes into his life. He wasn't expecting this, though.Never this.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Comments: 32
Kudos: 130





	alone together

**Author's Note:**

> a thought because i’m wary of my own apartment.

“Alright, you’re all set,” says Ethan’s new landlord. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I don’t mean to offend you, I just want to make sure. Can’t have our new tenant getting hurt, can we?”

What he really means is _can’t have our new tenant filing a lawsuit, can we?_ But Ethan holds his tongue and smiles.

“Yeah, no, I’ll be okay. I’ve gotten his far. I’ll manage. Plus the moving guys will be there,” he says.

And he’s got Spencer too, who’s been helping him get around long before he ever even moved out to LA. Ethan can hear the smile on the landlord’s face, polite and saccharine.

“Alright, then I’ll leave this in your capable hands, Mr. Nestor!” he says, and Ethan stoically tries not to think about the ‘ _Remember, please don’t sue us!_ ’ tacked on and unspoken at the end there.

He nods and smiles back. He can’t see the landlord’s fake polite smile, but he can certainly hear it; it’s taken him years to get good at hearing people’s tells and such. He’s practically a pro at it. He’s especially good at noticing when people are taking pity on him, and the landlord reeks of it when he’s not trying to make sure Ethan won’t sue them for letting him fall down the stairs or walk out into oncoming traffic in the parking lot. He could have made things easier for himself by choosing to live in an apartment complex that catered to people with special needs – people who were deaf or mute or, in his case, blind – but he’d wanted to live independently. He’d been living with the assistance of someone else for years. He wanted to try living on his own for once. His parents had been wary about it, sure, but he was twenty-three now. He could make his own decisions.

The moving guys make quick work of Ethan’s sparse furniture. He’s got a couch, a coffee table, a kitchen table, a bedside table, a bookcase and a bed. That’s all. No television, no home computer set-up. Just a few pieces of essential furniture. He doesn’t even have a lamp (which, why would he need one? Well, maybe if he had guest, but he doesn’t know anyone here).

But what he does have is a single box. It’s a large carboard box marked ‘fragile’ on the top in his mom’s handwriting. It’s full of knick-knacks: all sorts of them. There’s a Rubix cube that’s been modified to have a specific number of bumps on each of the different colors so that Ethan can solve it on his own, an egg of silly putty, a ball of spikes like a sea urchin (but not pointy enough to hurt him), a chunk of quartz tips, a fluffy fake rabbit’s foot. There’s a ton of stuff in the box, each one meant to give Ethan something to do and hold onto when he was anxious or nervous or bored. His world was communicated through touch, and so he touched everything - everything being fifty dozen odds and ends that felt interesting to his fingertips.

He sets about placing the things on the bookshelf. There’s no rhyme or reason as to where they end up on the shelf, just so long as he can reach for something without knocking the other items over in the process. He hums a little as he works, noting the subtle way the apartment creaks and settles. It’s newly renovated, but it’s been around a while; makes sense for the building to be settling. He can hear Spencer getting acquainted with the apartment too, shuffling from room to room. The floor’s carpeted (thank god) so he can’t hear the click-clack of Spencer’s nails, just the soft tinkle of his tags on his collar.

When he’s done, he feels his way through the living room to his couch and plops down, orders groceries on his app with help from Siri, and settles in to wait.

* * *

His neighbor is a girl named Amy.

She comes over a few days after Ethan moves in, knocking on the door in a cheery little rhythm. When he opens the door, Amy greets him warmly and introduces herself.

Ethan smiles. “I’m Ethan Nestor. Do you, uh…you wanna come in?”

She’s kind and bright (Ethan knows she’s bright because he can hear it in her voice), and though she declines to come inside, she tells him that she’sbrought him something. It’s a mug that she had apparently made, and even though Ethan can’t see it, he loves it. It’s got all kinds of different textures on it: polka dots that stand out, smooth sides, a wiggly and wavy handle.

He tells her he can’t accept it; no one’s ever given him a gift just for _existing_ (well, that’s what birthday presents technically were, but this was a gift from a stranger, not someone he knew and loved).

“Sure you can,” she says, “think of it as a housewarming present!”

He makes sure to invite her over sometime. He’s not the best cook, but he at least wants to make dinner for her sometime. He’s making friends, slowly but surely.

* * *

Ethan orders groceries again a week later.

The guy is nice, helps him put the things away when he comes over to deliver them. He’s been by to deliver twice now since Ethan moved here – he was the one who delivered to him the first time – what a coincidence that even in a city as big as Los Angeles he would get the same guy twice.

“I saw you got a wok this time,” says the guy; his name is Mark, Ethan remembers him introducing himself as, which is easy to remember since that’s also Ethan’s middle name. “You cook a lot? I’ve only ever seen really fancy chefs use woks.”

Ethan grins and leans back against the counter with a shrug. He can hear Mark rustling through the rest of the grocery bags. “Not really. I want to get better at it. I kinda suck at cooking.”

“My mom’s got a killer chicken n’ dumpling recipe; if we meet up again, I’ll give it to you.”

“That sounds cool,” says Ethan. He’s kind of surprised. He didn’t expect city people to be so nice; first Amy and now Mark. He kind of likes Los Angeles, or at least the people. Maybe living here won’t be so bad.

* * *

Sometimes Ethan thinks he hears footsteps in his apartment.

He’s pretty sure it’s just his upstairs neighbors, or Amy or even people walking on the breezeway outside. These walls are thin so it’s easy to hear every little thing that goes on.

But still.

He’s almost completely asleep when he swears he hears someone leaving his bedroom in the middle of the night. He doesn’t close the door at night so that he doesn’t walk into it if he has to get up, but he swears he hears someone cross the threshold. He calls out a “hello?”, but no one answers, and of course he feels kind of dumb. Wouldn’t Spencer bark if someone was inside the apartment? He's freaking out for no reason and it's kind of annoying.

He’s still glad for the fact that Spencer sleeps in his room though, just in case.

* * *

It’s Tuesday morning.

Ethan’s not a morning person at all. It takes him a little while to get out of bed and drag himself to the bathroom. He might not be ready for the day, but the day is ready for him, and he can’t afford to lay in bed the entire day – literally he can’t; he’s got a ton of transcription work logged away on his laptop to get to.

He goes through the motions. He’s getting used to the layout of his apartment, so that Spencer doesn’t have to guide him everywhere even inside of his own home. He washes his face, letting the warm water wake him up a little and plans his day in his head. Maybe he'll even try to make eggs for breakfast this morning. He can kind of make them well enough on his own; maybe he'll even jazz it up with some of the fresh fruit he'd ordered with his groceries last week.

Ethan splashes the water over his face, careful not to breathe in and get a lungful of water, and straightens up.

He pauses. Something’s different.

The atmosphere has shifted.

Maybe it’s just Spencer poking his head into the bathroom. But no, Ethan can’t hear the tinkle of his tags. Is he just imagining things?

“Hello?”

He immediately feels stupid for calling out to an empty room. _God, no one’s there, okay? You’re imagining things!_

But his skin is prickling, the way it might when someone was in close proximity.

Like they were right behind him.

He swears he can even feel the _warmth_ coming off of them. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? Ethan turns, slowly because he’s actually a little nervous. Reaches out.

His fingers ghost over the air, nothing but open space behind him. His skin is still prickling, this time with anxiety. He shakes his head minutely.

_You just need time to get used to the apartment_ , he tells himself. _It’s your first time really living on your own. You’re just nervous._

That doesn’t stop the feeling of eyes being on him though. He tells himself it’s his own unseeing reflection looking back at him in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with his apartment. There’s nothing wrong with him. There is nobody else in this apartment.

* * *

There’s a breeze coming from somewhere. Ethan can feel it as he walks into the living room.

He frowns. He hadn’t left a window open. And it’s not the AC unit because he had only felt the breeze as he’d walked into the room. If it had turned on, it would have filtered through the whole apartment. Ethan narrows his eyes in curiosity. He walks closer to the front door, a sudden pit of nervousness opening up in his stomach. The breeze, along with the summer heat LA was known for, becomes stronger as he approaches, and despite the balming temperatures, his blood runs completely cold.

His fingertips graze over the doorknob and the door creaks slightly on its hinges, halfway ajar.

* * *

Mark breathes in, slowly, quietly. Ethan’s hearing is better than he accounted for, as his few close calls have demonstrated, but he’s only just woken up. He’d seen the way he’d stumbled through the apartment in the mornings, not because Ethan was blind – he had quickly learned his way around the apartment – but because he was simply so disoriented with sleep. Getting used to a different time zone would do that to a person, blind or not.

Ethan scrubs at his face with the soap, lathering up his skin while Mark comes up behind him. He’s so close. If he wanted to, he could just reach out and touch him. Just raise his arm a few inches…

Both arms come up, inching forward to close the short distance between them. Mark can feel the warmth of Ethan’s body against his chest; he always runs a little warm after he first wakes up. Ethan’s hands are still preoccupied with his face as he rinses the soap off, eyes unseeing at his own reflection. Mark really could just wrap himself around him, press him close against his chest and take in the scent of his sleep-mussed hair.

But Ethan pauses. A flicker of confusion crosses his face and Mark frowns. That wasn’t right…

“Hello?” Ethan calls out, voice a little raised and thin with fear.

Mark doesn’t even breathe.

Then Ethan’s turning slowly, one hand raised, and its only because Mark was expecting his movements that he manages to step out of the way in time, just as Ethan’s fingers brush the air where he had been only seconds before.

He sees Ethan shake his head, turn back to the sink and start brushing his teeth. His hands are shaking a little though. Mark almost wants to hold them, fold them up in his own just so they’ll stop. But he can’t. He won’t. He’d rather not give away his secret just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> hi, it's cloud (or vee)! i'm not dead, just busy. i moved a few months ago when this was written, and have been trying to get accustomed to it. the walls settle and i can hear every little noise outside and inside. it's really daunting, especially if you're a paranoid mess like me, thinking that the creak outside my bedroom is someone walking around my apartment in the dead of night!
> 
> i'm on tumblr and twitter at veedoesthings! let's talk and hang out there!


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